About

“You Don’t Say?” is a rage comic face based on a contour drawing of Nicolas Cage that is that is used as a sarcastic response to an obvious observation or statement, in similar vein to “O RLY” image macros.

Origin

The phrase “you don’t say” is an idiomatic expression used to convey surprise or astonishment but it can be also used sarcastically in response to an obvious statement.[8] The image of Nicolas Cage was taken from a scene in the 1988 black comedy film Vampire’s Kiss, which revolves around a troubled literary agent’s descent into madness after convincing himself that he is turning into a vampire. His unique facial expression was taken from a particular scene in which Cage’s character Peter Loew torments his secretary in a disturbing manner.

The scene from Vampire Kiss was featured in a video titled “Nicholas Cage Freaking Out,” uploaded by YouTuber twoworldsfreak01 on July 27th, 2009. A still from the scene was also used as a reaction face in a in a demotivational image captioned with “Nicolas Cage / Available in Stoic and Batshit Crazy” uploaded to Roflrazzi[13] on August 15th, 2009. The contour drawing of Nicolas Cage first appeared in a rage comic uploaded to Reddit[1] by user LeechHax on October 1st, 2011. It had been vectorized by Redditor Aveilleux[10] for LeechHax to use specifically in his comic.

Spread

On the same day, LeechHax’s comic was reposted to FunnyJunk[9] where it received 4,211 up votes in the span of a month, and again posted onto image-sharing site Lowbird[5] on October 3rd, 2011. Another instance was submitted to the r/funny subreddit[3] on November 25th, 2011, with the vectorized face placed next to a bag of carrots that only listed “carrots” as its ingredient. The image reached the front page, accumulating over 4,000 up votes in 5 days.

On November 27th, 2011, a Facebook screenshot with the face was posted to the r/trees subreddit.[4] Additional derivatives can be found on FunnyJunk[7], Reddit[11] and with the tag “#you don’t say” on Tumblr.[6] A Facebook fan page[12] for the face has over 9000 likes as of March 2012.